It's that curiosity that this spring prompted Mains to organize The American Investigative Society of Cold Cases, a non-profit professional organization he said that will review cold cases involving homicides or disappearances in hopes of finding new leads to follow.

“I continue to educate myself every chance I get as it relates to cold case investigations, Mains said. “I love helping people and I love investigating and reconstructing cold cases.”

His fascination with cold cases revealed itself in 2007 when, while working as an undercover narcotics police officer in Williamsport, Mains discovered information on the Internet about Dawn Marie Miller, who had been missing since 1992.

The next day he said he checked with his captain, and was given permission to investigate it on his own time.

Miller was last seen leaving the former Bellefonte Academy apartments in Bellefonte with two men on Oct. 24, 1992. Within one week after starting his investigation, Mains said he had two suspects and determined the woman had been murdered.

One suspect committed suicide and he said the other confessed to being present when she was killed and but no body was found where he told police she was buried. The case is in the hands of the Centre County District attorney, he said.

Looking for another challenge, Mains said in 2011 while working undercover for the FBI’s Safe Streets Task Force, he sought permission from his city police captain to look into the murders of Gail Louise Matthews, 23, and her daughter Tamara M. Berkheiser, 5, who were found stabbed, strangled and beaten in their Williamsport home on Sept. 2, 1994.

“I begged,” he said. "I will do it on my own time like before. I was told, ‘No, you are not an agent.’ I was flabbergasted.

“I decided at that moment that I was not going to allow another victim to be forgotten about and I made the toughest decision of my life.”

Mains resigned from the force, took a $50,000 pay cut, became a county detective and is now the lead investigator in the case.

He is confident he knows who committed the murders, and that it was not the man who spent nearly two years in jail until the charges against him were withdrawn in 2004.

In forming The American Investigative Society of Cold Cases he got commitments from experts representing a variety of facets of law enforcement from across the country, including psychologists and forensics experts, to either review cases or work as consultants.

He consulted with some of them in the Matthews-Berkheiser investigation, he said.

“When you need help on a cold case, you can’t be ignorant and believe you can do it all yourself,” Mains said.

Vice president of society is Bellefonte Detective Matthew Rickard who is the lead investigator in the 2005 disappearance of former Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar.

Although the Gricar case has not yet been submitted to the organization, Rickard said he is impressed with the people Mains has put together to help try to solve cold cases.

It would be almost impossible for a police department to bring these people together to review a case, he said. There is no charge for their services.

Since its formation in the spring, the society has received five cold cases for review, all from outside Pennsylvania. Something that was overlooked by the investigating agency has been found in each case, Mains said.

Upon completion of a review, the case file is returned with suggestions on what needs and should be done, he said.

Among those on the review panel are retired Colorado Springs Detective Lt. Joseph P. Kenda who appears on the Discovery Channel’s Homicide Hunter program; retired FBI Agent Mark E. Safarik who was in the behavior analysis unit; and Dr. John A. Liebert, a forensic psychiatry consultant on Ted Bundy, Green River killer and Atlanta child murder cases.

Also, Dr. Werner Spitz, a forensic pathologist in Michigan who served on a committees that investigated the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King,; Laura Pettler, a private consultant in North Carolina who specializes in bloodstain pattern analysis and crime scene reconstruction; and Henry C. Lee, a forensic scientist who testified in the O. J. Simpson trial and assisted in the Jon Benet Ramsey murder investigation.

In addition to the review board, he has 36 investigators, professionals and educators within the criminal justice field nationwide who serve as consultants.

To be a consultant an individual must possess at least a master’s degree or a bachelor’s degree with a minimum of 15 years of law enforcement/investigative experience and be able to contribute to solving a cold case, he said.

Mains and other board members may be contacted through the society’s web page at www.aisocc.com.

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